Giving Up the Ghost provides an in-depth analysis of comedy and romantic ghost films. Using post-Freudian, Lacanian and feminist approaches, Giving Up the Ghost examines a range of popular movies, including Heaven Can Wait (1978), Truly, Madly, Deeply (1991) and Ghost (1990). Fowkes outlines startling similarities among recent ghost films and films from the late 1930s and 1940s, speculating on the significance of ghosts and angels as subjects of film narrative. Giving Up the Ghost explores gender blurring to achieve an alternate conception of voyeurism and visual distance in cinema, linking films as diverse as the melodramatic Always (1986) and the comedy Ghost Dad (1990).